WHAT WENT WRONG - Galaxy Quest

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

What do you do when the number one on your call sheet won’t stop farting? Embrace it! This week, Chris & Lizzie travel to the Klatu Nebula to cover Galaxy Quest, a nearly perfect film almost undone by a terrible marketing campaign. Learn how this production survived the loss of its first director, on-set script changes, and Alan Rickman’s despair at working with Tim Allen to become one of David Mamet’s favorite films.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

by Grab Thaws Hammer. Hello and welcome to what went wrong, your favorite podcast, Full Stop, that just so happens to be about movies. Chris, that felt very unnatural for me to say that. But here we are. And now how you know how Sir Alexander Dane felt whenever he delivered that line, except when he said it's Echwellick. Sir Alexander Dane, that is the character who Alan Rickman plays in this movie.

Sorry, I cannot actually absorb the character names from Galaxy Quest that are not their TV show characters. Fred Kwan, Tech Sergeant Chen, but Kwan's not even his last name. Yeah, I'm a big fan of this movie, Lizzie. It was fun. Yeah, welcome back, guys. Thank you for picking Galaxy Quest. I'm thrilled.

Yeah, this was a poll movie. It was a poll movie. I love this film. I saw it in theaters when it first released seven months after seeing The Phantom Menace and really didn't think that I would like this one like a hundred times more than Star Wars, but I did. I thought it was amazing. I hadn't seen Galaxy Quest in years.

I found it wonderfully surprising. Lizzie, do you have any history with this week's film? Yes, I, well, first of all, I kind of forgot that it existed. Like, I knew on the fringes of my brain that this movie was a thing. No, not in like a bad way. I remember, I have like vague memories of watching this with my dad when I was a lot younger. When did this come out? 1999. December 25th, 1999.

I think I saw it like Blockbuster, like after it had come out. Oh, you did not see it in theaters? I did not see it in theaters. But I had completely forgotten about it. And then on their Patreon poll, everyone voted for this one. And I was like, oh, boy, is this going to be a stinker? It's not. It's really fun. No, no, no. Okay.

This is one of my top 10 favorite films of all time. Wow. So this movie, first of all, it's an incredible. movie to watch with an audience. So I saw it in 1999 for the first time with my family, did not know what to expect. Not only did I love it, but my dad is a huge, he was a huge Trekkie, the original Star Trek series. My dad too. And so he loved it. And he was getting jokes that I wasn't even getting, but as a 10 year old, listening to your parent, you know, laugh is also fun. It was great. I then, I think I watched it again in high school a few times with

friends. And then in college, I made a bunch of guys, yes, I was in a fraternity for one year. And I made a bunch of people watch it because they hadn't seen it. And they loved it. So this movie has a lot of currency in my own mind as a form, like a bonding film between me and different groups of people. I did not realize. Like when I watched it again, it took me a while to realize I had seen it multiple times before. And I think it's because I, like you said, I was too young to get most of the jokes, and particularly I was too young to understand how much this is roasting William Shatner. Well, so, okay, let's highlight something you just said. At 10 years old, you were too young to appreciate a lot of the jokes. That's going to become very important as we talk about this film.

I'm guessing they marketed it to kids. And it's not a kids movie. Galaxy Quest, like all movies, faced significant hurdles on its way to becoming what it is now, which is truly a cult classic film. But first, as always, the details. Galaxy Quest is a science fiction comedy film directed by Dean Peresow, written by David Howard and Robert Gordon. It is both a send-up of and an homage to the sci-fi genre, most specifically Star Trek, and its impassioned fan base, the Trekkies.

It boasts an all-star ensemble, including Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shaloole, Sam Rockwell, Daryl Mitchell, Justin Long, and Rico Colentone, Patrick Green, Missy Pyle, Jed Reese, and Rayne Wilson. It was released on December 25, 1999 by DreamWorks Pictures, and as always, here is the IMDB logline for the film. The alumni cast of a space opera television series have to play their roles as the real thing, when an alien race needs their help. However, they also have to defend both Earth and the alien race from a reptilian warlord. Actually, don't think you need that second sentence. I was going to say, no. I think the first one was fine.

Okay. Before we dive in, my primary, and I really want to plug these, my primary sources for this week are the wonderful documentary, never give up, never surrender, a Galaxy Quest documentary. It's great. Came out a few years ago. the documentary leans more into the movie's relationship

with fandom and I'm not going to speak about that as much in this podcast so I would recommend watching it listen to this podcast and then watch it

I think it'll be a great one-two punch experience there is also a great oral history that MTV created called MTV's Galaxy Quest The Oral History written by Jordan Hoffman he's a film critic

and he actually gave Moonshot a very nice reviews thanks Jordan Also, Alan Rickman's posthumous released diaries, madly, deeply, the diaries of Alan Rickman, which I highly recommend reading. They're great. Read three or four of them, entries, you know what I mean, in a sitting. It's very brief, and they're all very honest and very funny, as well as various contemporaneous

articles and retrospectives from the Hollywood Reporter and other traits. So, dear listeners, the question remains, what want wrong in Galaxy Quest. Now, of course, Lizzie, all of these films start with a script. And in the late 1990s, playwright-turned-screenwriter David Howard went to see an IMAX film. Which IMAX film? I don't know. But we do know that before the IMAX film started, he saw a trailer for another movie called

Americans in Space. And importantly, that movie, I think it was another IMAX film, had voiceover provided by Leonard Nimoy, the actor famous for portraying Spock in the Star Trek series. And as David Howard listened to Mr. Nimoy voiced the trailer for an IMAX movie that no one was probably going to see, he had to think, oh God, how tragic a decline the American science fiction TV actor suffers when their show ends. Well, and I also just want to say, in case we have any youngens listening,

IMAX movies back in the day were not what they are now. No. Like, I remember when I was little, we had an IMAX dome. Right. Science films. Yes, we had the only IMAX was an IMAX dome. It was at the Virginia Museum of Science. And you could go and you could see, like, Richard Attenborough telling you about animals or Dr. Fock telling you about space.

I saw one about mountains, I believe. It was just mountains. Those were your options. Because IMAX is the size you needed to see the mountain. Yeah. And, yeah, they were designed to show off the capabilities of the medium. Like, that's why IMAX created the films, not to, you know, shoot Christopher Nolan action sequences. Right.

This was not Avatar. So, David Howard started watching Star Trek reruns every night as an idea took form in his mind. What if an alien species got hold of the footage of a canceled sci-fi TV show? but thought they were real. What if the stars of that show were then recruited by the aliens to crew a real spaceship and fight in a real interstellar war? David Howard wrote his spec script and he called it Captain Starshine. Well, you know, first draft title, but great idea.

Great idea. He sent it out and it landed in the hands of producer Mark Johnson. Now, lucky for him, Johnson was looking for his next film. Furthermore, he had just entered a first-look deal with DreamWorks, the relatively newly formed venture led by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the ex-Disney exec who was going after the Mouse House hard with his new company. Now, if you remember from our episode on The Emperor's New Groove, if you haven't listened, check it out. DreamWorks was co-founded by Stephen Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. That is the SKG, Spielberg, Kastenberg, Geffen. And at this point, they had a solid to mix track record in the late 90s. They had some successes like Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, Prince of Egypt,

but also a few flops, including Polly, which I actually really liked, but it didn't do very well. Is that the bird? It's the bird movie, yeah. I believe with Tony Shaloo. She don't like birds. I don't like birds. Neil Jordan's In Dreams, the Ben Affleck, Sandra, Bullock Rom-com Forces of Nature.

Oh, that's bad. Yeah, and the haunting. And actually, the haunting was a financial success, even though it flopped critically, and we will have an episode on that at a later date. Now, Katzenberg had just gone through a very messy divorce with Disney. He had overseen the start of what's considered the Disney Animation Renaissance. He'd been an EP on The Little Mermaid,

beating the Beast, Aladdin, and the Lion King. However, he was denied what he believed to be a promised promotion to be second in command under then CEO Michael Eisner, and he had been forced out by the board. He then sued Disney and was awarded $250 million in unpaid compensation. So Katzenberg and Disney hated each other. Also, allegedly, partially the inspiration behind Hades in Hercules after their acrimonious split. Yeah, I'd also heard Lord Farquod in Shrek.

is supposed to be Michael Eisner. Yeah, as well. So, Katzenberg, Spielberg, and Geffen form this company. And externally, everyone's saying, oh, good luck to you guys. But deep down, all these studios are like, we hope these guys fucking fail. Sure, burn in hell. Yeah. Burn and hell.

We don't want the competition, et cetera. And so his primary responsibility was DreamWorks animation. Again, going after Disney, rode to El Dorado, aimed at Emperor's New Groove. We will cover Ants v. is a bug's life in a later episode. That's its whole other thing. However, Galaxy Quest was an interesting proposition because it could fit into their slate,

but play wider, like some of the Disney live action stuff that had been released in the 90s. So Johnson shares Starshine with some of the producers at DreamWorks, and everybody agrees that the premise is great, but the script, as executed currently, doesn't really work.

And here's what I've been able to gather. I was not able to find a copy of that script. Basically, the two big departures are that while the final film was focused on the crew as a whole, Captain Starshine was very much focused on the lead, then Captain Starshine, to later become Commander Taggart. Second, his script was almost entirely based on Earth. So it was not a space opera. It was a Fish Out of Water comedy set on Earth, but this was the... the late 90s and sci-fi films were sci-fi films and comedy films were comedy films.

And so there was no way that like a comedy film was going to get budgeted like a sci-fi epic. So he had just written it very contained. So Johnson and DreamWorks bring in a dozen other writers to pitch their versions of the movie. They option the script. They say, thank you very much, but we're going to bring in a more experienced writer to do the rewrite. according to producer Elizabeth Cantillon, they all had one thing in common. Jason Nesmith hated being the captain. That was his character motivation in all of the different versions that they heard.

He hated being the captain. He was trapped in a role. He would do anything to shed it. That's what it was in the original script. Screenwriter Robert Gordon came in with one simple adjustment. This guy loved being the captain. Which is so funny. He would do anything.

to be the captain again. So at this point, Gordon had one produced credit, 1997's Meg Ryan Black Comedy Romcom addicted to love. I've never seen it. It looks like it was moderately successful at the box office, but didn't do that well critically. He'd later go on to write Men in Black 2. Lemony Stinkets gets a series of unfortunate events. However, Galaxy Quest is by far the biggest thing that he had tackled at that point. So he won the job, and he asked for the first. script. He'd not read the script. They just gave him the concept and he came in and pitched. And they said, we don't want to give it to you. And he said, why not? And they're like, we like what you just pitched

us. We want you to come up with a new movie taking that original premise and your new take on the captain. And so he wrote the new script from scratch. He actually never read the original script when he did his quote, rewrite on the story. Yeah. How does that, how does the first guy not get a story by credit. How are they splitting writing? There are a number of ways that that could have gone down. I don't know. It's possible that the studio suggested shared credit and Robert Gordon's accepted it. Again, that's a little esoteric and I'm not sure what the answer is, so I can't answer it. However, as he worked through the story, Gordon realized two things. First of all, the movie had to have a really successful,

dramatic turn to make it work. So he wrote in the scene where Jason Nesmith, Tim Allen's character, admits to Mathazar that they're actors. And he felt like when he nailed that scene, he really finally understood the movie. And the second thing he realized is that this was not an earthbound movie. This was a space opera. And so he sent them into space at the end of Act 1. So he sends the script in, DreamWorks loves it, a green light. it. However, there's a little bit of trepidation on the part of Mark Johnson, the producer,

because he doesn't feel that DreamWorks fully understands the tone of the movie. He thinks that they are trying to make space balls. And his point is, no, no, no, no, no. The humor comes from the fact that we're going to treat it like a drama, right? Right. It's very sincere. It's very sincere. Point being, DreamWorks thought it was going to be incredibly broad. And as a result, the director that they were looking for should be a very successful broad comedy director. Johnson had a director in mind, and that's the director of the tiny indie film Home Fries, Drew Barrymore. Starring Luke Wilson and Drew Barrymore. Have you seen it, Lizzie? I think I have seen it when I was really young. A few wild facts about Home Fries.

It was written by Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad. It was written while he was at NYU. It won a screenwriting competition, and Mark Johnson produced it. It was directed by Dean Parasso, who at this point was a journeyman TV director. He had helmed Northern Exposure for a few episodes. Bakersfield PD, never saw it, and The Marshall. It was very weird. It is the tale of a knocked-up fast food worker, Drew Barrymore,

who's being hunted by the mother of her baby's deceased. father, played by Catherine O'Hara. Meanwhile, she's falling in love with her dead lover's brother, Luke Wilson. Wow. If I have seen this, it's gone from my brain, but I would maybe put it back. Yeah, it flopped, made kind of $10 million against a $15 million budget. However, Peresso was a, he's a very good director, and he had started his career with an extremely successful short film, 1988's The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, for which he'd won the Academy

Award for Best Short Film. So he had 10 years of experience directing television. He'd won an Oscar. So my point is, he was not simply the director of one indie film when he was being considered. They never really are. Yeah. So Katzenberg loves the rewrite, now titled Galaxy Quest, colon the motion picture as a reference to Star Trek. Star Trek, yeah. Yeah, but they changed it. However, he wanted and needed a bigger director for his $50 million sci-fi comedy. And this was also looking like a riskier and riskier proposition because in 1998, New Line released Lost in Space

and that flopped. And Lost in Space was similarly a family-oriented space film. So again, they're like, uh-oh, what are we doing exactly here? So they bring in Ghostbusters alum, actor-director

Harold Ramos. Yeah. So Harold Ramos gets hired to direct the movie. He is obviously a veteran comedy actor and director. He directed Caddyshack, vacation, Groundhog Day, and multiplicity underrated Michael Keaton film. And Lizzie, I think we probably both agree that Groundhog Day is what makes him an obvious choice for Galaxy Quest. That movie funny.

I'm about to get added, but I've never seen Groundhog Day. What? Yeah. Okay. Wow. We're going to pause the podcast. You're going to go watch it. Don't make me.

No, it's good. It's a fun movie. Okay, fine. Okay, fine. So for those of you who haven't seen Groundhog Day, it balances a somewhat whimsical sci-fi plot, a time loop, with humor and heart, giving a blend of comedy and drama to great effects.

And multiplicity duplicate Michael Keaton's in that movie does a similar thing. And so my point is he had done super successful comedy. he had done very broad comedy, and he had done a little bit of science fiction. And he was the Ghostbusters. And Ghostbusters is a great comp for this. So Mark Johnson, Demers, Katzenberg, Harold Ramos gets hired. Great. We're going to go make this movie.

They bring on Industrial Light and Magic to do the effects. ILM had done, the VFX supervisor they brought on had done, I think, seven Star Trek films or TV series at that point. this is going to be a serious science fiction enterprise. However, Ramos is adamant that the only way to make a sci-fi comedy work is that we only cast actors who are neither comedians nor had previously acted in science fiction films. Oh, well, all right. Who am I to tell Harold Ramos how to do this?

Yeah, exactly. Here's my guess. the story is very self-referential, obviously, very self-aware. And my guess is that Ramos felt that he needed to avoid adding additional layers of meta-narrative to the story through the inclusion of sci-fi veterans who tend to be typecast within the genre, which is being satirized by the movie, or comedians who would break the dramatic tension of the story since the humor comes from their genuine reactions,

not the comedic commentary on said situations. my guess. He was traumatized by Bill Murray from all the times they had worked together. He was actually traumatized by a different movie. Maybe that was it too, but I'm going to get to who he was traumatized more specifically by in a unique way. There's some scar tissue here. Yeah. So this led to two extremely uncomfortable situations. First of all, Jeffrey Katzenberg loved Tim Allen for the role of Jason Nesman. Nothing has ever made more sense. So to be Fair. He's great. He did it. Yes. So it's 1999. Tim Allen is at the peak of his powers. A brief sidebar on Mr. Allen. The Colorado native had grown up a theater and music nerd. He had worked at the

student radio station at Western Michigan University. He got a BS and communications. He fell into stand-up comedy in 1975 when a buddy dared him to perform at an open mic at Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle in Detroit. He was 22 years old and apparently he crushed it. He's very funny. He began appearing in local commercials and hitting the comedy circuit only to have his fledgling career cut short in 1978. Now, I'm not sure if you know about this, Lizzie, but I'm going to give a little bit of background here. So Tim Allen lost his father in 1964. His dad was killed in a car accident, and they were very close. Tim Allen was 11 years old. According to Allen, he fell into heavy drug use in college. The death of his father weighed on him

heavily, and in order to pay for his drug habit and his tuition, he began dealing drugs. Oh, wow. So on October 2, 1978, Tim Allen was arrested at the Kalamazoo Battle Creek International Airport in Michigan for possession of over 650 grams of cocaine. Whoa. Yeah, and unfortunately for Tim Allen, the state had just passed legislation that mandated a life sentence to those in possession of over 650 grams of cocaine. So at like 24 years old, Tim Allen had been set up by an undercover police officer, and he was facing life in prison.

He pled guilty to trafficking, then provided the names of associate dealers in exchange for a reduced sentence. His case was moved to federal court, which saved him from that mandatory minimum of life sentence. And in the end, he served two years and four months in federal prison. in Minnesota, he was released on June 12, 1981. Wow. I did not know that. I knew he had a drug problem. I had no idea that that had happened. Yeah, and a quick note on that timeline, I saw one source that said that he actually performed stand-up for the first time while out on bail before he was sentenced for his, I don't know how much that matters. However, the laugh factory's bio of Tim Allen also states that his comedic abilities

were honed when he was behind bars because he was trying to make people laugh so they would not kill him. Yeah. Well, especially considering what you just said, I mean, he snitched on people. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't judge him at all. No. Oh, my God.

I would be naming him so fast. I would snitch on everybody. Absolutely. I just feel like, give me a phone book, man. Seriously. Everybody's going down. Don't tell me anything. I will name all of you.

Yeah, exactly. I do mention this, though, because it will play into some of his behavior on set. Tim, by his own admission, he did not like feeling sadness, feeling emotions deeply. And he said that he felt like if he was not at every moment making someone laugh, that he was not doing his job and not doing what he was good at. So again... That makes sense.

Yeah. So how he and Alan Rickman would later buttheads on this movie. I just want to lay that out. So after his release, he splits his time between. working a day job at an ad agency and doing stand-up at night. He rebuilt his career. He begins to tour regionally,

develops a name for himself with this blend of self-aware, self-deprecating slash broad physical comedy. He presents himself as this average Joe, which is ironic because he's very smart. But he plays toward kind of that middle America, every man mentality. By 1990, he's headlining

in his first comedy special, Tim Allen, men are pigs. He began to attract offers to star in TV pilots, specifically ABC Disney TV pilots, including Lizzie, a spinoff of Turner and Hooch, and another one of the Dead Poets Society. Wait, wait. I know. Someone re-green like that. Tim Allen's The Dead Poets Society sounds great.

Rip-wrowing comedy. Exactly. To his credit, he turned them both down. He wanted to create a series based on his own comedy. He wanted to do Seinfeld, he wanted to do Everybody Loves Raymond. Sure. His patience was prudent. So in 1990, author Robert Bly published this book that I don't think anybody's heard of now,

but was very popular in the early 90s called Iron John, a book about men. It actually spent 62 weeks as a New York Times bestseller, and it kind of kick-started this men's movement based on Bligh's analysis of Iron John, a wild man character from Grimm's fairy tales. Basically, it was an attempt to redefine. masculinity in a more primitive setting in response to feminism. It sounds more healthy but not dissimilar from Jordan Peterson sort of now, if that makes sense, to anyone out there.

Point being, here was a book that gave voice to the exact kind of men are pigs philosophy that Alan had actually been making fun of through his character on stage. And so all of a sudden, his comedy was truly at the center of the zeitgeist. enter Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katsenberg calls him and he goes, we want to offer you a show. And Alan goes, I already turned out Turner and Hooch

in the Dead Poet Society, Jeffrey. So no thank you. And he hangs up. Kastenberg gets his home phone number, calls it back and goes, maybe you didn't hear me. Apparently, Alan said, that's when I knew it was time

to do a show for Jeffrey Katzenberg. Because he just couldn't say no to him. Yeah, it's terrifying. He set his demands. The show would be created from scratch, based on his stand-up persona. He loved remodeling shows. And so home improvement was birthed.

He played Tim Taylor, a family man, an overconfident host of a public access style show, Tool Time. And Tim Allen and Home Improvement, Katzenberg and Disney struck gold. Home Improvement ran for eight seasons, never finished outside the top 10 in Nielsen ratings, although I don't think it ever hit the number one spot. And Allen's career exploded in 1994.

he starred in Disney's The Santa Claus, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Me too. I don't know about you. It grossed 190 million against its $22 million budget, which is crazy. And he also released a New York Times bestselling book, Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked man right here. However, Lizzie, there's one role that really made Alan the obvious choice for Jason Nesmith.

Any guesses as to which role that is? I'm sorry, I'm not super familiar with Tim Allen's Uber, although everything you're saying is ringing a lot of bells. Well, it's okay because it was a voiceover performance. Oh, Buzz Lightyear. That's right. The wonderfully arrogant Space Ranger Buzz Lighter in Pixar's Toy Story. He is so good in that.

He's so good. And he's not far from Commander Taggart. Not at all. So Toy Story set the world on fire in 1995, gross $400 million worldwide. So 1999, Katzenberg says, I'm going to make this happen. He calls Tim Allen. He goes, I got this quirky sci-fi movie. It's got your name all over it.

Tim Allen says, music to my ears. He loves science fiction. He was a big sci-fi nerd growing up. Katzenberg takes Ramis and Alan out to lunch, and Alan thinks he has the job. And then midway through lunch, Ramis says, well, we're talking to a number of people. And Alan kind of freezes.

Katzenberg had not told him that he didn't have the part. Oh, no. As Alan told the Hollywood reporter, I had a very peculiar lunch with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harold Ramos. Katzenberg pitched me on the idea of the commander character. And then they started talking and it became clear that Ramos didn't see me for the part. It was pretty uncomfortable. For some reason, he was hung up on having an action star who could be funny versus a comedian who could do action.

In the documentary, Alan actually says, but clearly that was bullshit because he was looking at other comedic performers. He just didn't like... I just hated Tim Allen. I don't think he hated him. I just think he didn't see him in the role. Apparently, Harold Ramos hates no one. He, everyone speaks very lovely. That's what I've always heard.

Very, very nice. So according to producer Elizabeth cancelon, Ramos was not avoiding him because of Bill Murray. He was actually avoiding him because of an experience with Robin Williams. So Ramos' least successful film was 1986's Club Paradise starring Robin Williams. I think it sits at like 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. Never heard of it. Exactly.

The film bombed critically and commercially, and Ramos took it really hard. and he felt that that was his failing. And the reason that he felt that he had failed is that he felt that he was unable to harness Williams' creative and comedic energy. He didn't know what to do with him. And so Williams just kind of ran wild on the movie and it didn't work. And so he felt that he had no grasp of Allen's comedic chops either. He could appreciate what Alan did.

He didn't not know how to use it. So he worried that he would run into the same problem all over again. So again, I don't think it's that he thought he was bad. actor or anything. I really think he just felt like, I know who I am. I don't know how I can make this guy work in my movie. Totally, which is a completely fair reason to not want to cast somebody. And to his credit, Katzenberg and DreamWorks and the producers weren't going to force someone on Ramos. So according to Mark Johnson, Ramos convinced them to go to Alec Baldwin. I mean, also would have been good. Also pretty good. Yes.

Alex Baldwin is very, very funny, both unintentionally and intentionally. But this was before 30 Rock. So this is like, I would argue, it would have been him doing 30 Rock 10 years before 30 Rock. It's before 30 Rock, but it's after things like malice. He's got some funny lines in that. According to Alec Baldwin, by the way, he was apparently, he says offered the role and then the offer was retracted. I'm not sure how accurate that is. What'd you do, Alec?

Kevin Klein was offered the part and was apparently Ramis's true top choice. However, he turned down the role. He liked the material. He was friends with Ramos. Apparently, he did not want to leave New York, and they were shooting in L.A. Anyway, Steve Martin. Also great. Mel Gibson.

Oh. Bruce Willis. Oh, my God. I mean, these all could have been good. And Tim Robbins. That one is the only one I'm out for. Yeah, it doesn't quite work to me. To me, Alec Baldwin feels, in retrospect, like maybe the other.

version that, you know, kind of works personally, but... Would have been meaner. Yeah, exactly. Now, meanwhile, Ramis's Ghostbuster co-star, Sigourney Weaver, had gotten hold of the script through her agent. Weaver, as I'm sure you all know, had defined the sci-fi genre as much as anyone else over the past 20 years with her role as Ripley, the star of Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and the recently released, and I would say underappreciated Alien Resurrection, that

movie's insane. I highly recommend that you watch it. When Weaver read the script for Galaxy Quest, she saw the opportunity to play a character who was actually much closer to her natural persona than Ripley. She's like, I'm much more like Gwen DeMarco, Tani Madison than I am like Ripley. I have to have this part. That's so interesting because this may be a controversial opinion. I think Sigourney Weaver is the only part of this movie that's not an A-plus.

And I love Sigourney Weaver. Oh, I highly disagree. I think she's amazing. She fell a little flat for me. and I love her. I just didn't, I don't know. It didn't hit for me. Well, you and Harold Ramos,

because apparently he was adamant. No sci-fi actors in this sci-fi movie. So Weaver, a three-time Oscar nominee wasn't even getting submitted for the role. Damn. At this point, Harold Ramos was feeling boxed in. He was unable to cast the movie. He wanted to.

And so, as the movie was moving deep, into pre-production, again, they were building sets, designing the ships, ILM was on board, Stan Winston Studio was on board to do the practical effects. They were months, if not weeks away from actually shooting. He departed the project. Wow. Now, it's unclear whether or not Tim Allen joined the project immediately prior or after Ramos's departure. So I'm not sure if it was like, it's Tim Allen or nothing and he left, or it was that he left. Or it was that he left. and then they offered him the part. What is clear, though, is that he actually had the option

to star in a very different sci-fi comedy released in 1999 that I'm not going to make you guess. And that's Bicentennial Man, the eventually Robin Williams-led story of a robot's 200-year journey to become human. I think Tim Allen chose the right project. Yeah, in this instance. Tim Allen comes onto the project.

Sigourney Weaver was the second person to be cast. As soon as Ramos was out, the studio was just like, Yeah, come on in, Sigourney. Of course, yeah. We're good. So the leads are locked in, DreamWorks needs to find a director very quickly. My guess is that not only are the production dates and flexible due to the fact that Alan is committed to home improvement, which is a Disney show and Disney hates Katzenberg, so they're not going to let him flex his dates at all.

It wouldn't surprise me if Alan also had a pay or play stipulation in his contract, which would mean that after a certain. point, even if they didn't shoot the movie, they would have to pay a portion or all of his salary for the film. So Mark Johnson saw his opportunity. He calls Dean Parasso, the director he'd been working on with Home Fries. He goes, this is the movie. Let's go sell DreamWorks on you. He takes him into DreamWorks, makes his plea. We're out of time. I vouch for it. Let's do it. DreamWorks apparently saw 8 to 10 other directors, but in the end, Mark Johnson supported Parasol. and they said, you've got the job. Parasso comes on with one goal,

and it changes the tone of the film. He goes, we're not making a comedy. We are making a great Star Trek movie. And we have to hope that the comedy comes naturally. So everything, everyone locks into place. We're not doing Buck Rogers. We're not doing space balls. We are doing sincere, earnest drama.

And as a result, I think that's what makes the movie work? Yeah. You know, there's very tender and sincere moments in this, and then obviously it's very funny, but yeah. Also, just tonally, like, it is so, it's so harkens back to the Star Trek movies that it works really well. Yeah, I agree. So Dean's on board. Sigourney Weaver calls him up, and she goes, Dean, I've got two stipulations. Tani needs to have a blonde wig because she'd always wanted to play a blonde. And she goes, and this is Sigourney, I want big. I want big. big boobs. And he said fine. And apparently she was like, I would argue she would today create a hostile work environment with those big boobs. They were in everybody's face all the time. Like all the

jokes were coming from her about she and in this documentary she said later, you know, blondes definitely have more fun. I loved being a starlet. I miss my breasts. I miss my blonde hair. I miss my insecurity. And I I love Sigourney Weaver so much in this movie. I think she's She's great. By the way, how old do you think she is in this movie? I don't know, 45. She's 50. She looks amazing. Holy shit. She looks great. She looks better than I'll ever look. Yeah, shit. Way better than I will ever look. Anyhow, Martin Scorsese famously said that 90% of a film is casting, and that's certainly true of Galaxy Quest. What works so well is that the final product operates at so many metal levels, it boggles the mind.

However, a few of these parts went to very different performers, a quick rundown. So next up on the call sheet, Alan Rickman. Now, Alan Rickman was a very tough sell to the studio, not because he was a great actor, but because he was a great actor. This was before Harry Potter, and he was known as a serious performer. Most recently, so 1995, I think, he's Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. Which I fucking love, and David still hasn't watched, and it's the one thing I want to watch David. It's so good.

David, you should watch it. He got a BAFTA for that, best actor in a supporting role. He was then in Michael Collins, opposite Liam Nissen. And then he played Rasputin in the HBO biopic, Resputin Dark Servant of Destiny. Whoa, got to find that. Very good. Mm-hmm. And then he did a bunch of stage work, and he even directed 1997's The Winter Guest.

Harris's point, though, is that he is the character. He is Sir Alexander Dane. He is an actor utterly above the material that he feels that he is playing. The studio was like, well, we got to. cast comedians. So he's like, don't worry, we will cast funny people around him, but that's going to be what makes him so perfect for this role. Also, Alan Rickman is so funny. He's so funny. Which is, by the way, everybody in this documentary talks about how he was the funniest person. Justin Long tells a story later on about how he almost did a play with Alan Rickman, but the date slid. So he had to,

long story short, he couldn't do the play with Alan Rickman. And when his other job started, Rickman sent him a bouquet of flowers. And in the most flowery language possible, it just said, fuck you on the card that he sent him. And that's exactly his sense of humor. Yeah. Okay. Paul Rudd auditioned for, it's believed, Guy Fleigman, crewman number six, the role that

went to Sam Rockwell. That would have been good. Additionally, Tony Shalub also first read for that part. However, Sam Rockwell came in and just. played it completely straight. Rockwell was an indie drama actor and had like a mental breakdown in his performance when they watched it. They were just like, oh my God, this guy's amazing. No one knew who he was. And again, on a metal level, they're like, who is this guy? It's Truman number six. He's perfect. Shalub then got offered the part of Fred Kwan. And he said to the producers,

quote, I'm not going to play an Asian guy, but I'll play a guy that plays an Asian guy. How about that? And so like that, it's a little hard to notice, but Every time he gets into character, he does squint his eyes, which is like, I think they tried to pull back from it in the edit, but it's definitely there. I did not pick up on that. So, yeah. It's a riff on David Carradine in the show Kung Fu. So, like, apparently the character was very thin on the page. And Tony Shalub was like, can I play him like David Carradine in Kung Fu?

By the way, Keratin was always high on that show. So can I always be high in this movie? And so, like, the joke of his character, and a lot of this got cut in the final edit, is that he's eating constantly. And the reason he's unfazed by everything is that he is stone throughout the entire movie. Okay, good. Just making sure. It did not, I did not understand it at age 10. I understood it at age 34 that he was very high.

And God bless him. So as a result of that shift, they had to cut all of his dialogue. And Dean Peressoe and Robert Gordon rewrote all of his lines on set. They had to, like, improvise everything as they went along. So some favorites of mine include when he leans out of the ship and they don't know if the air is breathable on the planet and he just sniffs. Yeah. That was Tony Shaloo. Also, the group hug with the thermians in the engineering bay.

That was his idea that he totally ripped. Yeah. Now, Sam Rockwell was extremely reticent about taking a role in a comedy. He really wanted to be a serious, end dramatic actor. And his only other big role, he had just shot, which was the Green Mile. And he had not yet been. released. He had actually landed an indie part opposite Marissa Tomei. I can't find this confirmed, but my guess is it's the 2000s happy accidents, a part that eventually went to Vincent Dinoffrio.

However, Kevin Spacey convinced him to take Galaxy Quest. So thank you, Kevin Spacey, four words I never thought I'd say. Lissy's just grimacing. Thank you, Kevin Spacey. The biggest influence on Rockwell's performance? Is it Tom Scarrett and Alien? No, but the right franchise. Game over, man! Game over! Bill Paxton as Private Hudson and aliens. Of course, yes.

Yeah, so that was his big influence for this film. Now, Laliari, eventually played by Missy Pyle, was almost played by a great actress who has taken the world by Storm recently, and that's Jennifer Coolidge. Oh, wow. Yeah. So she had auditioned, but she apparently played it kind of like a 1940s-50s starlet. No one knew how the Thermians were supposed to act at this point. And so Missy Pyle just played them totally earnest and straight.

And apparently casting director Deborah Zane sent her audition tape in with her business card attached to it and a note that read, if this is not Laliari, I will resign from the same. CSA. Whoa. She wasn't alone. Steven Spielberg also loved Missy Pyle enough to lobby for her role to be expanded. He also smartly pointed out that she was the only female character aside from Sigourney Weaver. In fact, as Tony Shaloup's role grew through his improv on set, the Laliari Fred Kwan love story was grafted onto the film during production.

So that was not in the original script. Additional pages were written to give them the kiss. and then send her back to Earth with Kwan, which also led to one of my favorite jokes, Jane Doe as L'Oliari in the final credits. It's so good. According to the screenwriter, Robert Gordon, Sam Rockwell also riffed the line,

oh, that's not right upon seeing them kiss, which I do love that line as well. Fun fact, Missy Pyle's untranslated Thurmean line that she drops in the limo, which that's one of the best laughs when she just screams. Yeah. That was written as, quote, a baby in a bagpipe. And then she just had to come up with like whatever the interpretation of that was.

She did it. She crushed it. So Enrico Colantone was one of the first two audition for the Thermians. He would play Mathesar. Obviously, he's a very wonderful, well-known actor from Veronica Mars, et cetera. His performance is what set the tone for the entire movie. Yeah. In terms of, you know, the rest of the...

cast. So he loved the script. He went in an audition for Dean Parasso, and apparently the audition was kind of meh. He went in, it was okay. And Parasso thought, well, this isn't our guy. Rico's great, but he's not our guy. And as Rico was leaving the audition, he kind of turned back, and Parasso was like, what? What's on your mind? And he goes, well, I was coming up with this voice idea for the character, for the Thermians. Maybe I could try it for you. Parasso was like, yeah, do it. He just goes, we are thermions from the glad to nebula, and you are our only hope. And he just does this insane voice that apparently is based on a seven-register vocal exercise from his Yale acting days that I don't fully understand. And Parasso heard it and just thought, oh my God,

that's it. That's what the thermians should sound like. Kellentoni called it, Happy Jehovah's Witnesses. Yeah, that is what they're like. a perfect way to describe it. So apparently, as they entered production, they actually set up what they called an alien boot camp, where they and the increasing number of thermions that they were casting, figured out all the aspects of how they moved and spoke, including apparently Patrick Breen, his contribution,

he plays Quellick, who's obviously obsessed with Dr. Lazarus, Alan Rickman. His contribution was that they couldn't figure out that their arms were supposed to swing counter to their legs, which is why their arms go up. with their legs on both sides. It would be hard if you have a lot of tentacles. Who knows?

It's so good. Jed Rees and Rain Wilson were also cast as Teb and Lank. And as a collective, they kind of came up with this very lovable, naive manner of performance that I think really grounds the movie in a really fun way. And it just, it really heightens the stakes, you know, for our heroes because they are protecting children, you know what I mean, at the end of the day. And so, again, credit to Enrico Colantone for really creating the groundwork for all of that. And it just goes to show you, listen to your actors.

They will bring you some of the best stuff. Yeah, and actors, try something. Yeah, exactly. So Darrell Mitchell was hired to play Weber by Perra so personally. They just worked together on Home Fries. And then the film was the feature debut for Justin Long. He's really funny. He's older than I thought.

When I was watching it, I was like, oh, my God, is he like 14? He's like 22. He is not aged. There is a portrait of him in his attic. Yeah, for sure. So he had actually auditioned for the casting director, Deborah Zane. Her sister is also a casting director, Bonnie Zane. He had just done a pilot for her. She sent him in to her sister, and he actually beat out Karen Colkin, Eddie K. Thomas, and Tom Everett Scott for the role. And he was basically doing a mix of Marty McFly in Back to the Future and the comic book guy in The Simpsons. And And like, that's what he had found would work.

He's great. He's great. Yeah. He's so earnest. We'll talk more about him later. So they put together a killer cast, and of course, they need a killer crew. For production design, they hired Linda Deshanna, an incredibly accomplished production designer who had been the set decorator on an incredible number of science fiction films, including,

but not limited to Logan's run, Star Trek the Motion Picture, Blade Runner, and Back to the Future, Part Two. She is obviously a veteran of the genre and she knocked it out of the park with this film. She wanted to avoid the, quote, realistic industrial look of 1990 sci-fi films that had all kind of evolved from the original alien and harken back to the sleek, sophisticated interiors that Buck Rogers and the original Star Trek episodes wanted to achieve but couldn't quite afford to. Polish cinematographer Yerzi Zelensky was brought in to shoot the film. He was the DP on Home Frye, so he just worked with Parasau. I think you did an amazing job.

Looks great. Yeah. As I mentioned, ILM did the VFX, which hold up today. They look awesome. I don't know if I'm 100% with you on that. What do you think doesn't look good? This is a period of time in movie making where I feel like things had just started to turn into completely CGI and it versus something like Jurassic Park where a lot of it was still

practical. They're like not quite to the place where they get a few years later with CGI, but they're still using it for everything. So there's some stuff that's just like a little like, I don't know. It looks fine. I think there's other things that hold up a little bit better, but that was one thing about this that bumped me. Come after her in the comments. I hard disagree. Stan Winston Studio did the practical effects, including the pig lizard. Which those look great, as always. They look great. ILM found themselves working closely with the DreamWorks lawyers to ensure that nothing they designed would lead to a lawsuit

from the owners of the Star Trek IP. I'm sure. In fact, all of the ships in the movie start with the letters NTE, which actually stands officially for not the Enterprise. Perfect. So they could stand up in court and say that. I should also mention that the film uses three aspect ratios, the four by three format for the TV series that opens it,

then the more standard 185 flat spherical ratio for like the next 20 minutes. And then when Tim Allen realizes he's actually in space, it opens up to widescreen anamorphic. This did cause a couple problems on set. Steven Spielberg had advised Parasot to put reflective mylar on the ship floors to give them some reflective light and give some life to the set. And apparently the lights that they were using to provide enough light for the anamorphic lenses were so hot that the mylar instantly buckled and ruined the floors of the set. had to be rebuilt. Thanks, Steve. Now, according to the oral history provided by the cast,

production was relatively smooth, aside from the constant fart jokes and literal farts provided by Tim Allen. And so this is where we'll get into where things come to ahead. So Alan's relationship with his co-stars seems to have really mirrored that of the film. He apparently annoyed the hell out of Alan Rickman, who felt that he felt he was not a serious performer. Now, the way that I've heard it described, is that Rickman would show up five minutes before the shoot would start,

and he would know everyone's lines. Alan would show up 15 minutes late, and he would make so many jokes that nobody could hear action being called to start shooting. My God, that would drive me absolutely insane. In Allen's defense, he apparently took the movie extremely seriously. In fact, pointing out a number of logical inconsistencies that led to rewrites. He worked on a strict diet with a personal truels. trainer who actually ended up becoming his wife.

Funny story. And it seems like his humor may have been a way to diffuse his own anxieties about the part. Sure. According to Rickman, though, he would do things like kicking open the door of the makeup trailer later than everybody else and saying, number one is here in reference to his number on the call sheet. Tim Allen himself said that he actually had a T-shirt that said number one on it. As I mentioned, though, he had a number of contributions aside from his good

performance. Guy Flegman's concern about the air being breathable? That was Tim Allen's idea. Great. Now, there are a couple of entries I'd like to read from Rickman's madly deeply, his posthumously published diaries. Imagine this in Alan Rickman's amazing voice. April 26, 1999, the dining room scene. This is tough stuff, not made simpler if no one drives the car, be it director or leading actor. Also, having to deal with a bowl full of leeches and centipedes, who, unsurprisingly, do not wish to remain in their watery abode and proceed to wreck the scene by crawling up, out, and all over the place. May 10th.

At the end of the day, Sam Rockwell says, sorry, I say for what? Rockwell, I just don't want you to think American actors or wankers, which, of course, I don't. But Tim Allen has this perverse need to needle, antagonize, provoke, demoralize, he thinks he's being funny, maybe, which just slows everything down and leads to zero constant.

I feel like a reactionary. The wind and dust and sun make me feel like an invalid with a red face, which I did think was amazing. That's when they were shooting at a goblin State Park, which is where the brilliant sphere is on the mining planet. May 18th, his feelings towards Tim start to turn. Said a revoir to Tim before leaving, touching that he says he'll miss us. I've grown attached, there has been a sea change recently in noticing the spaces that each of us needs and should allow each other. Genuinely, I was able to say that I know how he felt. In a week we have, I think, a really healthy respect for each other, which was frighteningly

absent at first. So Rickman and Allen started to respect the ways that each of them approached the craft. However, that didn't change the fact that Alan was literally farting all over the set. Tony, Sulu said a lot of fart jokes with Tim. Some weren't jokes. Some were actually farts Missy Pyle said. It was like working with 12-year-old boys. Parasso defended his story.

He said, you can't get annoyed at Tim. Tim is like your little brother who comes in and just goofs off. Maybe it got annoying for Alan, but you could never tell whether that was Alan being in character or Alan actually responding to Tim. No, for sure, Alan Rickman is actually annoyed. It made it difficult. Apparently, Tim Allen, because he's a big sci-fi nerd,

he also begged Sigourney Weaver to sign a piece of alien memorabilia that he owned. She eventually agreed, and she wrote on it stolen by Tim Allen, Love Sigourney Weaver, to which he replied, why would you write that? I was going to put it in my screening room, to which she basically said,

fuck you. Oh, no. Very funny. Apparently, Tim Allen and Justin Long's relationship was also identical to in the movie, as when they first met, Justin Long was accidentally sitting in Tim Allen's chair,

and Alan decided to fuck with him by getting pissed at him for sitting in the number one person on the call sheet's chair, and apparently he had a a pretty good time, like, roasting him on set. Now, Tim Allen wasn't the only person up to hijinks. Sigourney Weaver hired a stripper to come to set and give Daryl Mitchell a lap dance on his birthday,

and then she left before she started the lap dance so people didn't think it was her, which I did think was very funny. Sigourney Weaver's having a great time. She's having a great time. She invited the entire cast to go to the 20th anniversary screening of Alien, and in the third act, When Ripley enters frame in her underwear, it's dead silent, and Tim Allen just goes, yeah, baby.

Oh, God. I left the audience. Oh, my God. Sam Rockwell said that Tim Allen really liked saying, yeah, baby. Okay. Despite his antics, even Alan Rickman eventually realized that Tim Allen was perfect to play Jason Nesmith. Now, Stephen Spielberg came to set for one day of shooting. And that was the day that they shot Nesmith's admission.

to Mathesar that he had lied. Parasso was adamant with Alan. You cannot fuck around on this scene. You can't be a smart ass. You can't phone it in. This scene only works if it works at a dramatic level. And Alan, to his credit, knew that that's what he had to do. He came to set, shoots the scene, getting more and more emotional.

Everyone's captivated. He goes up to Dean Parasso as they've finished filming and he says, I don't like these things I'm feeling. I'm going to go back to my trailer and then walked away very quietly. And as he left, Alan Rickman apparently said, oh my God, I think he just experienced acting for the first time. Oh, no. Tim Allen then runs into who else but Steven Spielberg as he's leaving the set.

Spielberg says what you just did was very good, the greatest director in the world. To prove that Tim Allen is an equal opportunity ass with all these people, he did not know how to take the compliment. So he grabbed Steven Spielberg by the shoulders, pulled him over to Patrick Breed and a couple other actors and goes, you guys have any idea who this guy is? He directed 1941 and walked away. Oh my God. He razzed Spielberg, which is what he had done to everybody on set. And then he left because he didn't want to feel the feelings he was feeling.

And that's how he processed it. Oh, I mean, knowing the background, it's like... I have to love Tim Allen in this moment. Like, I think it's amazing. He gets a compliment from the greatest director on Earth. And his instinct is, I'm going to burn this guy for his one shit movie right now. I mean, I just feel a lot of sympathy for him, especially with, you know, like the drug problem makes sense. and like that everything that he's gone through.

He's had been a coping mechanism to not have to deal with this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So Spielberg had some great ideas for the film. One, not so great idea. He didn't like the Thermians looking like Octopi. He just was like make them look like gray men from close encounters.

And apparently he gave that note three weeks out from shooting. And they were just like, it's too late. We can't change them. And thank God, because that joke is so funny. Yeah. I'm so glad they kept it. Now, Galaxy Quest apparently got a lot of freedom on set because it was shooting in parallel to Gladiator.

So nobody's looking. Oliver Reed had just died on that set, so nobody was paying attention. And apparently, listen to our episode on Gladiator, apparently things really didn't come to a head until they hit post-production. The producers and director assembled the director's cut, and they were like, this movie is great.

And they showed it to DreamWorks, and DreamWorks didn't know what to think of the movie, because it was not a broad comedy and it wasn't a family film. I actually would argue it is. a family film, but it wasn't in the way that they thought a family film should be. So some changes. Sigourney Weaver, you can still see that she says, well, fuck that.

When they see the chompers, the slamming, you know, things, it's dubbed. They put screw in her mouth, but very obviously the F-bomb. The cut that they ended up testing was a PG-13 version. They test it, and DreamWork stacks the audience with a bunch of families, and it goes really badly. The kids don't get the humor. It's not a lot of Star Trek fans. Apparently, one of the mothers followed the producers into the bathroom after the film and said, how dare you, this is a Tim Allen movie, which I did think was very intense.

I mean, I guess I'm just a little confused because this doesn't, to me, this doesn't read as a typical family movie. This is a movie for adults that kids can enjoy, similar to the Princess Bride. Yeah. I don't understand. I mean, I guess it's like you assume that. the biggest moneymaker is the thing that everyone can go to, but by kind of shoehorning it into that box, you might lose people.

It's for two reasons. So one, the Rugrats movie had released in 1998. It was G-rated and made a billion bazillion dollars, and everyone was chasing it. That's because people don't want to talk to their kids. I know. And then they were also going up against Stuart Little. That was being simultaneously released.

And instead of leaning into the counter-programming, they wanted to go head to head. So a few things that got cut. Apparently, there's a sequence where they show the crew their quarters. And the joke is that Alan Rickman's Dr. Lazarus' quarters was all like devices aimed around probing your anus. And so that was cut. There's also a scene where Sigourney Weaver seduces one of Saras's troops, those aliens. And that's why her bra is showing at the end of the film.

I was wondering about that. So that scene was also cut. Apparently the joke in that scene is that one of the aliens is attracted to Sigourney Weaver. and the other aliens grossed out because it's the equivalent of bestiality for them to be interested in humans. It didn't think it was pretty funny. They also wanted to make the movie shorter,

so they suggested removing Justin Long's storyline entirely. Oh, no. Yeah, which is, I think actually would have ruined the movie because the connection between the fans and the crew is really at the heart of the film. So luckily, Stephen Spielberg intervened on behalf of the filmmakers and said, no, no, no, you can't cut Justin Long's storyline. So the marketing team doesn't know what to do with the movie.

Apparently, the head of marketing at DreamWorks at the time, Terry Press, wasn't able to see the movie with an audience because she was very pregnant with twins, so she watched it on her own, and she just didn't click into it. You know, maybe it just wasn't for her. And so they just marketed it as a movie for 8 to 12-year-olds. It was a Christmas movie for kids. No. They put it in theaters aimed at kids.

They aimed for earlier screenings and matinees. Oh, no. Furthermore, they didn't worry about the fact that they were, maybe they weren't able to. They didn't use the finished VFX shots for the trailer, which Lizzie, despite what you may think they were great at the time. I don't, listen, I'm not knocking the VFX people that worked on this. It looks amazing. I think it's a specific, listen, ILM knows what they're doing. It's a specific era of VFX that I think doesn't hold up as much. They're going to come after me. George Lucas is coming. George, that's fine. George can come. So obviously, the reason

these effects weren't ready, this movie didn't wrap until midway through 1999, and it was released less than six months later in December of 1999. So the timeline was insane. They released the movie on December 25th, 1999. After the premiere, the head of UTA, Jeremy Zimmer, went up to producer Mark Johnson and said, quote, that was fantastic. Who would have known? That speaks to the lack of marketing the film got. Yeah. It grossed an anemic $7 million domestically. its opening weekend against its reported $50 million budget. However, despite bad marketing, word of mouth did start to spread. And the movie actually increased its box office reach in its second and third weeks.

It eventually made $90 million worldwide, falling short of breaking even. But it was not a complete flop and it would become extremely profitable after the release of home video materials. I for sure saw it at Blockbuster. Like that's where I remember it being pretty heavily featured. It was in the top ten at the box office for multiple weeks. One unexpected issue. Projectionists around the country didn't know to open the curtains from 185 to 2.35 aspect ratio, 20 minutes into the film. So a lot of people just didn't see the final edges of the movie.

And Dean Parasso in the documentary is very self-deprecating about it. To his credit, Jeffrey Katzenberg quickly realized that he'd screwed up. He personally called Dean Parasso in early January two weeks into the release of the film. He apologized. He said, we botched it. This movie should have done way better. Could have grossed double what it did. It being the marketing campaign.

Yes, exactly. Sigourney Weaver specifically remembers that she was hardly asked to promote the film. She went to Australia to promote it, and that was it. There was no promotion in China or in Europe. However, that was not the end of Galaxy Quest. Why? Because Dean Peres-O had achieved his goal. He had made a great start.

Star Trek movie. In fact, many of the phone calls that the cast and crew started getting were from the stars of Star Trek. Oh. Reaching out and saying, holy shit, you have made the greatest Star Trek film ever made. Will Wheaton says it's the greatest Star Trek film ever made. And in fact, at the 2013 Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, it was voted by fans the seventh greatest Star Trek film ever out of than 12 films. In fact, David Mamet wrote later that four perfect films have been made, The Godfather, A Place in the Sun, Dodsworth, and Galaxy Quest. Wow. Yes. Harold Ramis, after seeing the film, called producer Mark Johnson and said, I loved it,

and Tim Allen was perfect. What a gem. Galaxy Quest paved the way for serious actors to take on roles in sci-fi genre films. I would argue it actually opened up the gate for Marvel. It allowed the irreverent tone of Guardians of the Galaxy, and it spawned a fandom nearly as devoted as Trekkies with folks around the world, cosplaying as Thermians and the heroes of the NSEA Protector.

In 2015, it was announced that Galaxy Quest would find a new life as a television series with the entire original cast returning. However, Alan Rickman, passed away shortly after, and that idea was put to bed. Aw. There have been a number of announcements in the ensuing years about further developments, including a proposed version to be written by what went wrong villain Paul Shear.

Just kidding. We love you. We love you, we love you Paul Shear. Our nemesis. Who doesn't know we exist? Maybe he's looked at his chart position once and seen us lurking nearby. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. In April of this year, Paramount stated that they were in the early stages of a Galaxy Quest series for the Paramount Plus platform.

All right. Keep an eye out for that. Now, what makes Galaxy Quest work and what gives it its staying power? I think it's that Galaxy Quest at its best proves that two seemingly incompatible truths can exist at the same time. It both makes fun of and lovingly honors science fiction and its fandom. It is utterly ridiculous. entirely capable of capturing our imagination, and yet I cry every single time Alan Rickman tells Quellick that he will be avenged. It's both Tim Allen, a stand-up comedian turned sitcom star, stretching beyond what those around him believe to be his limited capabilities, and it's Alan Rickman, a renowned thespian who may be above the material he's being presented with, but who also knows that the show must go on. It's also something greater than the sum of its parts

because it allowed for the true collective ownership of the work. Everyone involved had the autonomy to bring their own love and vision to the film resulting in something that transcended what had been originally set to the page. It's a film about the ways we can change and about the ways we can learn to accept and grow and realize that there is more complexity to our fellow men and women than we will ever be able to understand. Further Galaxy Quest shows us that, in an ideal world,

true ownership over any movie or TV show is shared between its creators and fans and in an ideal world, both sides push the other to move the story and the medium forward, neither being satisfied with remaining trapped in the past. And I'd like to end our episode with my favorite entry from Alan Rickman's book. And I'm going to cry, probably. So, God, Alan Rickman, son of a bitch. I can't believe Galaxy Quest is going to be the one that makes you, cry out of everything we've done.

I cry every time I watched this movie. Despite what Alan Rickman said about Tim Allen's performance to Dean Parasso on the day that he performed his dramatic scene, his sarcastic comment about how he'd finally learned what acting was. He went home and he wrote in his diary.

Something very different. God damn it. On June 4, 1999, Hawaiian Day on set and Tim has to motor a scene which is the heart of the movie and he does it beautifully and that was the entry.

Oh. Anyway, that's Galaxy Quest. You made me cry. I've never seen you cry. Anyway, I love this movie. There's so much more on this movie. you guys, check out the documentary. It's excellent. Thank you. What went right? So much. But I'm going to say Tim Allen. Like, I just, I think this movie is the, you know, crowning achievement of his career as an actor. I think he's a good stand-up, obviously. I think he's a good

actor, but I think that this movie, I think he wanted this movie to propel him. to something more he's admitted that. I don't think that happened for him, but I think that's fine. And I think that actually to create something this good, like, what could he want beyond it? You know what I mean? Like, you could always want more roles,

but, like, he is great in a movie that David Mamet said is one of four perfect movies. Yeah, that's so many people love. And Tim Allen, I know he's, I don't know if he's controversial now, but I think he's a little bit out of the mainstream, et cetera. And I think it's easy to forget how big a person he was in the 90s. And to his credit, he knew he wasn't the first choice initially. He knew he wasn't a real actor, like a lot of the other people he was on set with.

And yet he brought it and good for him. And he's great. 100%. I would agree. I think Tim Allen was also my. what went right, especially after learning more about him and, you know, what sort of went into his need to be funny all the time, which is both fascinating and sad. But since you stole my what went right, I will, I'll say Alan Rickman because I just, I miss him, I love him. He's just, and he plays, he's so perfect. He's so funny. I mean, he's just always so funny. And, you know, I love so much when actors who are so classically trained can show you that just because you're someone who has,

you know, a background in Shakespeare and the most serious of content does not mean you can't be the funniest person in the room. Oftentimes they are. And he was just so smart and just has one of the best voices ever that has ever existed. And we will always miss him. But Alan Rickman, Galaxy Quest. Chris, why is this the one? that's making us cry. It's a great movie, Lizzie. It's amazing. It is a great movie.

I loved it. Thank you all for choosing Galaxy Quest. Of course, we have to give a shout out to our full stop supporters on Patreon. Chris Leal, Matthew Pelton, Tom Christen, Somanchanani, and of course Michael McGrath, thank you all so much for your support. If you're interested in engaging with us more intimately, feel free to go to Patreon at www.com slash what went wrong podcast. You can join for free and vote in the polls for which films we cover. Obviously, that's how Galaxy Quest was picked. You can also join at different levels to get different perks,

including ad-free feeds of all of our episodes, bonus episodes with crew members, including crew from some of the films that we've covered, like Twilight, and much, much more. So feel free to head over there. And we have a ripped from the headlines, bonus episode that is, Live Now, it came out last week, so you can head over there and listen to that episode. And, you know, friends, we are a bi-weekly show due to our bandwidth. However, one of our favorite holidays is coming up next week, and that is, of course, All Hallows Eve. So come back to the feed because maybe we have a little spooky surprise for you.

I don't know. Maybe. We'll see. Just keep an eye out. Until next time. Never give up. Never surrender. Go to patreon.com

slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthonai Uvos.